For the majority of Aloha’s existence members have not resided in the same city. That challenge was alleviated to some degree on Home Acres, as they used a private blog to communicate preliminary concepts to organize and develop the album. All rumors of hibernation are completely false. Aloha’s been busy crafting another alabaster throng of unique sound. Yet this time it seems darker than usual. This time its contrast of lyrics that detail turmoils and the various disfigured-shaped vacuums of the heart are more evident by checking out the album cover, which depicts a foreboding manifestation, a sinister edifice in black and white, that suggests from behind any crevice in any shadow unhealthy phantoms are waiting to charge out.

REAX: …so no one in the band lives near the other?
Tony Cavallario of Aloha: We haven’t as the band Aloha?, we haven’t lived in the same town since 2001. Actually, technically, we never all lived in the same town except when Cale (Parks) joined the band in 1999. So it’s been a long time.

REAX: How do you maintain a long distance band relationship like that?
TC: For a long time the way that we did it was just by being together a lot. At least probably I would say 4 or 5 months out of the year we were touring, recording, or whatever. For most bands, being in a band can be sort of like an on/off thing. You have a tour, and after the tour you don’t see each other for a few weeks, and then you get back together when it’s time to write a new album and you have this real well defined cycle of album/tour and album/tour. If you have a good working relationship with band members, in terms of song writing, I think that’s probably what makes it easier for us. It would be hard for us to stop doing it because it really happens pretty fast when we do get together.

REAX: What have you been doing to get ready for the tour?
TC: Some of the songs we’re going to be playing from Home Acres we’ve never played live and the last time we were all in the same room playing them we’re in the fall of 2007, when we did the original tracking. So right now we’re trying to figure out which songs we’re going to play and rehearsing them.

REAX: In the promo material for the album it said that Home Acres was initially written through a private blog. What’s that about?
TC: Basically it started with me when I sat down and decided it was time to start writing a new Aloha? record. A lot of the songs start with me. So basically I set up a secret blog and that way I felt like that when the band members checked it in the morning or whenever, they’d see the progress organized as everything was happening, instead of just getting a random mp3 in their email or getting a cd in the mail. It was a way to get everyone involved in the beginning. Kind of see which ideas take off and which ideas I needed to do a little more convincing on.

REAX: What do you mean convincing?
TC: Well I mean sometimes you write a song and your band mates will say ‘That sounds like every song you write. And let’s do something else.’ And sometimes when you write songs you don’t know if it’s good or not. It’s really important when you’re writing songs by yourself to have people hear what you’re doing so they can tell you what things to keep going with and what to throw out. Because it’s really hard to know when you’re by yourself. You can end up in a cycle of self-editing where you think that everything you’re doing is crap. So my band mates will say ‘Oh this is great. I’m going to add a beat to it and we’ll make a song.’

REAX: So was it really that sort of daily activity?
TC: I don’t know I don’t remember that but I seem to remember basically posting there nightly because I’m sort of a night owl and I would go up into my studio, probably around the time that I first built a studio in my old house in Rochester, NY. I would just go up there and come up with a new idea every day or two.

REAX: It was a pretty laid back approach.
TC: Yeah it’s laid back in the sense that we weren’t in a studio with the clock running. We were basically letting things happen more naturally. I guess the thing with the blog is after you’ve been doing something for a while, like being in a band for 10 years, you get this urge to streamline or institutionalize things. You don’t want it to seem like your band, the thing you put so much effort into, is just this random thing that happens every once in a while. The blog was a way to make a change, to give it a place where we can go and work, even though we’re not in the same town. It’s one of the many many things you do with technology to get your shit together without having to be 20 years old and all live in the same house and get into fights, which is good because the space that we provide one another as a band by being a long distance band is the key in us staying tight in that way.

REAX: How long did it take to record Home Acres? You said the original tracking was in 2007.
TC: The original tracking meaning drums, bass, guitars, organs, things like that, but a lot of these songs we stripped and built back up from home just by trying new instruments. I would spend days here and there recording vocals after I had everything written. Because when I write songs I have a demo… a vocal melody, maybe a chorus but I’m never done until the day that TJ (Lipple) is getting ready to mix it. I’m definitely the kind of person who will stretch it out as long as I can to make sure that I’ve tried every idea that I can. The first ideas are usually the best ones, but for this album there wasn’t a lot going on, there wasn’t a lot of deadline pressure after my son was born. Then that deadline pressure went away. I wasn’t going to go on tour that quickly after he was born. Things just kind of got stretched out. I would say that we did the songs in bunches, 4 in one session and then I would do one song at a time in my own spare time. When it really came down to it I had to say ‘Alright we’re just going to do this.’ And we rented an off season cottage in Cape Cod, my wife and I, which is an hour and half away from here and this place had a little artist studio where people do paintings while they’re on vacation. It’s a modest little house but it had a little studio in the back so I just set up my stuff and I had this tremendous amount of writer’s block on the song ‘White Wind.’ The lyrics were the most important thing about that song and they just weren’t right. I went up to Cape Cod and one night in the studio I just stayed up all night, and I finished two or three songs while I was there.

REAX: Should I imagine that I’m listening to Home Acres inside the building on the album cover?
TC: Yeah, totally.

REAX: It’s spooky. I think the image is certainly more intimidating and haunting than the music, or am I mistaken?
TC: I’m sure a lot of people would interpret it that way. But you’ve got to understand that I’ve been in this band a long time making music that to me is very emotional, very dynamic in terms of what is presented. A lot of times people think that our music is like pleasant or pretty or precious, and for me it’s none of those things. I guess maybe hoping that seeing a darker image of the music that people will understand the contrast in the music of what’s going on in our lyrics and the kind of resolutions that happen in the music.

REAX: When it comes to lyrics Aloha? I always thought touched on themes always involving escape and wanderlust, escaping from the mundane, memories of momentary adventures, like trying to appreciate those experiences even though they’re so distant. What’s the sort of motivation behind that?
TC: I don’t exactly know. I’m a pretty laid back person but I’m definitely, I won’t say that I’m paranoid but I’m definitely a worrier. I have a very active sort of worried thing going on. When I make music it’s my chance to exercise that and another theme that I think runs through Aloha’s music is, there are people escaping and people are together on some sort of mission, there’s always a really vague narrative… I guess I’m trying to give people something anthem-ic rather than just personal.

REAX: I’m sorry, did you say ‘endemic?’
TC: Like an anthem, anthemic, like a mantra or something that they can, something that is motivational in a weird way, in the way that punk rock was to me at a certain time. There’s got to be some sort of energy to it even if it is kind of depressing.

Homes Acres is available on Polyvinyl Records, and go see them at Will’s Pub in Orlando, FL on April 12.